Sapphire packed up her things and rushed to make it to her next class a few buildings away.

That evening after finishing classes and sharing dinner with a classmate she made it back to her apartment, hugged her brother and brought up the assignment details. She carefully read through all three pages making notes as she went.

This time there were four Cartwright traps, random sentences that asked you to do something silly just to make it clear you had actually read things. Of course a lot of students just searched specifically for the traps and ignored the real instructions. For a sociology professor Cartwright was remarkably naive sometimes. Or maybe he knew people would do that and figured they'd pick up more of the assignment incidentally during their search. There was probably some truth in that. She always read the assignment at least twice to make sure she caught them all and she probably wouldn't have done that otherwise. Not back to back anyway.

Feeling confident that she understood now she settled in to brainstorm a little. Cartwright had strongly recommended using a community you weren't currently part of. It was tied up in all the ethics provisions. About how to get people's consent to use your observations. About what sort of observations were close enough to public that you didn't need that kind of approval. About how people could still feel betrayed even if no IRB would reprimand you.

With all that there were really two ways to do things, either she'd join some smaller group being open from the start and carefully laying out her reasons for being there. Or she'd join a large group where people were expected to be strangers initially. She'd still need to be careful if she ended up having private conversations with people but in that sort of context a lot was fair game.

She let out a short breath, something on the verge of being a laugh. "A game, that would work well." And she had let Tom talk her into signing on for a chance to join Gates of Eternity, that huge VRMMO that was being marketed really heavily lately. Still, she didn't know if she'd get in. The results weren't being released until late next week. And Cartwright was a stickler for details like that.

She rolled her eyes, partially at Cartwright and partially at herself. "I'm really doing this, I'm going to write two proposals just to cover the possibility that I won't be able to follow through with the first one." This time she actually laughed. That did mean she'd need to come up with another idea though. And if she was really doing this she might as well make a point to impress Cartwright so her second proposal shouldn't just be a slight variation on her first.

Eventually she settled on an animal shelter as her backup plan. She expected that different shelters probably varied and so she opened some new tabs and got to doing so background research. By the time she went to bed she had four pages of notes on various animal shelters and another three on Gates of Eternity. There was still work to be done but it seemed eminently achievable.

She turned in her proposals on time of course and Cartwright replied with his comments before they had class again on Monday. There were a lot of quibbles about small details but what stuck out was Cartwright's introduction.

You might be interested to know that you were one of eight students out of your class of forty who proposed 'studying' Gates of Eternity. You are one of two who actually bothered to include a backup plan and mention that it wasn't certain whether they'd get access to the game and the other student just suggested that they could study a different MMO community instead. I'll admit on the face of things I'm more interested in your proposal about a comparative analysis of the volunteer cultures at various animal shelters but I also think that one might be a bit too ambitious for a freshman. Please keep me appraised as to whether you're selected for Gates of Eternity so we can make an informed decision about which path your project will take.

That had been several weeks ago now. She had been surprised to be selected for the game. Tom was a little jealous but as good natured as always. Cartwright had in fact agreed to let her use the game as the basis for her term project. And now she was standing in a sports bra and some athletics panties for the calibration process. She had considered skipping even that small amount of clothes but she wasn't quite willing to trust the supposed guarantees that the calibration data would stay on her device.

"This is it then. Launch day. Time to see if this game is worth the money. I really wish I was the one logging in. I hope you manage to enjoy yourself at least a little between all the notetaking." He steps in and gives her a hug before picking up the NerveGear headset and handing it to her.

She hugged back firmly and then took the headset. "I'll do my best, I don't think fighting is really my thing but as you said there's supposed to be a lot of other things to do. I'll log out after the launch event and tell you all about it."

She brought the headset up to her head and put it on. She'd done that before to test the fit and see what it would do before launch day. Even before today the NerveGear had been impressive. In its augmented reality mode it clearly outshone the predecessors. She'd used it to try out a rhythm game, a small story game and a guided workout program. Tom had used it for a few shooter games. He'd actually had to stop part way through the second one and turn down the realism settings. It had been too much for him.

Today though would be her first time going into the full dive mode. She felt the now familiar moment of discontinuity as the headset overrode her vision. This time though, instead of the usual blank lobby with game icons she saw a wireframe of her bedroom, complete with a wireframe of Tom standing near her. The lack of a body carried over from the lobby.

A swirl of color whirled into existence in front of her. "Hello, I'm Veria. I'm the virtual help system for Gates of Eternity and I'm here to help guide you through the setup process. Before we begin, would you prefer to be rendered as a wireframe or based on camera data during the calibration process?"

"I think I've seen something like the camera data mode when I tried a workout program so I'll try the wireframe, just for a change." With her words she saw a decently detailed avatar materialize. It didn't show her clothes or too much precision but she could see her arms, legs and torso and they were all about the right size. She could even see her fingers and toes. Everything was translucent and indeed had a similar wireframe effect to the other contents of her bedroom.

"Certainly. If you're ready we can start the calibration process. If you have questions feel free to interrupt at any time."

"Thank you. I think I'm ready to get started."

"Alright, please begin by turning at the waist as far to the left as you can." Naturally the next stretch was to do the same turn to the right. The process continued like that for easily twenty minutes. Until the last stretch of "Please push bring your palms and fingers together with firm pressure and then move them so your thumbs are touching your sternum." Once Sapphire had finished that stretch. It had been time for "With that, calibration is complete. Please lie down in a comfortable position and let me know when you're ready to begin fulldive mode.

"Before I do, I have a question actually. Is there a way for me to take notes in game and then bring those out with me? I want to write about my experiences."

"Yes, there's a way to copy notes from something in game onto your NerveGear's local storage when you logout. Paper notebooks are freely available in the starting area to help people do theory crafting and planning and more sophisticated materials can also be obtained. If you summon me when you're about to logout I'll walk you through the process."

"That makes sense, how do I summon you?"

"By default the way to summon me is by saying 'Veria please help.' You can customize that if you want, though I think the default works for most people's needs. I'm generally not able to help in situations where you need to worry about attracting attention or when there's a lot of time pressure."

"Why's that? Actually, on second thought I'll lie down so I can ask you somewhere I can write things down." She walked over to her bed and lay down. She adjusted herself a bit to get comfortable, then signed to Tom "I love you, see you later."

The wireframe wasn't quite detailed enough for her to grasp his response but she took it as a sentiment along the lines of me too.

"Alright I'm ready." She felt a brief sensation of numbness pass over her body. Simultaneously the wireframe of the room dissolved leaving her in a small study lying on a couch. Looking down at herself her wireframe avatar had been replaced by an avatar wearing similar underwear to what she'd had on in the real world.

She also took note of the pink unreality indicator. She was glad to see it just as a signal that the developers were keeping to their promises. She looked around a little more before running her fingers through her hair. If she didn't know better she would have thought it was all real. She gave a small nod. "Well. The fidelity is definitely living up to the hype." She shuddered a little.

She took another look around the room and noticed a closet filled with clothes, a table with a notebook pen and pencil, a chair at the table, and a large mirror. There were also several bookcases with no clear organization schema or shared topic. Partially to calm her nerves and partially to follow up on her own requests she took a seat at the table. "If you don't mind I'm going to write down some notes before we keep going."

"Of course, take all the time you need. Patience is one of my strongsuits."

"I appreciate that." Given permission she did take her time, doing her best to note down her conversation thus far, describe the experience of the calibration process and to write out her thoughts and feelings about waking up an an unreal world that felt indistinguishable. It wasn't quite the done thing for a sociology notebook but she signed and dated the pages just like she would for a science lab class.

"So, I think I was about to ask about your comment regarding being unable to help in high-pressure situations. Could you elaborate on that?"

"Certainly, I was designed to help players with some of the more gamified elements of this world. That means I help them with things like level-up screens, navigating menus where applicable, and providing content warnings when crossing an arbitrary boundary will expose players to new types of experiences they might find upsetting.

"The classic example of a high-stress situation would be during a combat encounter, generally though people aren't trying to mess around with the complexities of the game UI during situations like that. If they are there's probably a problem with the UI that should have been corrected ahead of time."

Sapphire wrote that down. "Interesting, in some of the games I've played before I spent a lot of time in menus during fights. I guess that was generally when opening a menu paused time which probably doesn't apply here."

"Exactly, the designers weren't too fond of that sort of game experience so there was a lot of effort put into making everything a player would need to focus on in a moment of stress diegetic and immersive."

"That makes sense as a goal. There's been a lot of marketing put into how real everything feels. I am curious if the designers thought about the possibility of making things too immersive. Real world combat can be pretty traumatic and I don't think most people want to be traumatized by a video game."

"That was definitely something acknowledged by the design team. That's why the game has a tiered system of content warnings and why the developers wrote a number of filters and other mechanisms to remove realism in certain situations with a high risk of traumatizing players. Those mechanisms exist so players can control their experience and turn down or turn off things like the gore simulation. And those filters are all in place by default in the starting area to give players a smooth transition into the game."

"Well... that's good. I don't think I really want to experience being sprayed with guts and blood." For a moment, Sapphire contemplated logging out then and there. Cartwright would probably let her switch to her other idea. But no Veria said there were filters, she could just keep the filters on. And studying the reactions of the people who thought they were brave and turned the filters off would actually be some pretty important work. She refocused on her notes and continued with her transcription.